"You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation.”
-Marian Wright Edelman

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Time For Some Encouragement

When I started this blog I thought it would be an easy thing to keep up with media stories of adoption corruption. In the frequent lulls between stories I thought I would add some commentary, putting some of my ideas into essay form.

I would spend just a couple of hours a day on this blog and....famous last words....it would be manageable. HA!

In the two weeks that since this blog began, the news on adoption corruption that has been available in the media and the number of legal documents about adoption corruption cases that have entered the public domain has been nothing short of overwhelming. With numerous major developments in old cases, the breaking into the public realm of several new cases, and a steady trickle of smaller stories, I can say I am totally overwhelmed.

There is a backlog of articles and primary source material and the stories and the sources keep coming. Forget the commentary....who has time...

In the midst of all this, the picture that is emerging is confirming my worst suspecions about how international adoption is currently being practiced around the globe and about the irrational, self-defeating, and self-interested way that the international adoption community reacts to adoption corruption.

I'm ready for some good news or at least some encouragement that SOMEONE cares or that SOMEONE is on top of things with some energy trying to make a difference SOMEWHERE without burying their heads in the sand, without undermining the efforts of those who would root out corruption and help the vulnerable, and without exploiting those who are being helped.

Well, that good news came last night and this morning in the form of two emails detailing the work of two energetic groups of people trying to make a difference in a two places where children are being trafficked for adoption and for other purposes.

My next two blog entries will be about these people, their organizations, and their important work.

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Contributing Fleas

Why These Fleas Bite

Desiree: In 1998 my husband David and I adopted a sibling group of two older girls from India.

Within six weeks of their arrival, our new daughters, who were severely emotionally traumatized, told us they had been stolen from their birthfamily.

For six long and difficult years, our agency, though asked to do so repeatedly, failed to investigate our daughters allegations.

Finally, on our own with the help of an Indian activist for the poor, we found our daughters' birthfamily and confirmed their disturbing story.

Despite all this there has yet to be so much as an apology from our agency, and certainly no justice. Not for our daughters. Not for our daughters' first parents. Not for ourselves.

It seems that NO ONE CARES about this crime.

Our US agency--which has not disputed the facts of the case--says that it bears no legal responsibility even if, like we say, they helped place stolen children in our home.

Our pleas to both the Indian and US governments have fallen on what appears to be deaf ears, and therefore, we assume, uncaring ears. The state office which licenses our agency has a phone machine for complaints; apparently they do not return phone calls--at least ours was never returned.

Meanwhile, the Indian orphanage director has been jailed three times on child trafficking related charges. He is currently trying to be relicensed yet again.

We have been left to ask the questions:

1) How could this have happened? Was our case simply a rare happenstance or could there be specific flaws--specific or systemic--in the system that have allowed/caused it to happen?

2) Why is it that no one cares about this kind of crime?

This blog represents some of the answers we've found to these questions. It also is shares the ongoing answers as we continue to learn.

Flea bites are simply individual incidents of exposing the reality of international adoption practices--one example, one practice, one analysis, one real-life experience, one proposed remedy, and one "big picture" at a time.

If our insignificant flea bites can save other families the extreme pain that our daughters, our daughters' first family, and our own family have endured, these flea bites will not be in vain.

Usha: When I adopted from India not that many years ago, I was ignorant about the adoption landscape.

I believed the adoption myth that adoption agencies are basically trustworthy and that with all the hoops adopters must jump through, there are sufficient checks and balances to ensure that adoptions are ethical.

After adopting, I began participating in the adoption community.

My eyes were opened by the racist attitudes and beliefs I observed in fellow adopters from India. I couldn't believe the dim view I saw many take of my children's country of birth, my own country of origin.

Where were the checks to ensure that children were adopted into non-racist families? Later, my eyes opened wider when I learned about scndal after scandal with the recurrent themes of: getting children "out," agencies willing to look the other way, laws that are good on paper, but that are not enforced and individuals advocating for reform simplistically painted as evil and "anti-adoption."

First, I thought adoption corruption was primarily specific to India. It didn't take long, however, to become aware of how pervasive adoption corruption is.

With that knowledge came a sense of obligation that as a participant in the system: no matter how unwitting, I owe it to my children to advocate for reform

“Justice will not come to Athens until those who are not injured are as indignant as those who are injured”

--Thucydides, Ancient Greek historians and author, 460-404bc

“The more I learn, the more race, culture, and class stand out as the key issues behind ethical problems in adoption, domestically and internationally—the same issues are at play in both"”

--Tesi Kohlenberg, Adoptive Parent

Adult Adoptee Voices

"We are not commodities. We are children that were torn away from our countries, our parents, and our culture. We are not the newest fad. We are women and men who forever have a hole that cannot be filled. We have voices, and we use them to express our outrage, our bitterness, our anger, and also our joy,our love,and our lives. To learn from us is to listen to what is, sometimes,underneath."

"Sending" Country Parent and Community Voices

"We are not animals to be bought and sold,"

--Ana Escobar, a Guatemalan mother whose baby was stolen from her and who suspected her child was funneled into the International Adoption system. Ana diligently searched for her child through pending adoption paperwork until she found her--with a false identity and fake DNA tests--waiting to be processed for adoption by a US family. After a new DNA test confirmed Ana was her child's mother, the two were reunited.